Fitzgerald letters published for first time

Personal revelations from Booker Prize winner

20 December 2008

Fourth Estate has published So I Have Thought Of You, the letters of Penelope Fitzgerald, winner of the Booker Prize in 1979 with her novel Offshore.

Fitzgerald's personal letters, published for the first time, show her as unguarded, funny and clever. They reveal much about her family relationships and friendships and demonstrate how she managed her career according to her own convictions.  

So I Thought of You has an introduction from A. S. Byatt who won the Booker Prize in 1990 with her best-selling novel Possession.

Fourth Estate describes the letters as 'a fascinating portrait of Penelope Fitzgerald as a mother, as a friend - and as a writer.'

Philip Hensher, longlisted and shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2002 and 2008, said;

‘Of all the novelists in English of the last quarter-century, Penelope Fitzgerald has the most unarguable claim on greatness.'

As well as winning the Booker Prize in 1979, Fitzgerald was also shortlisted three times with her novels - The Bookshop in 1978, The Beginning of Spring in 1988 and The Gate of Angels in1990.

Penelope Fitzgerald died in April 2000 aged 83.

The Man Booker Prize Fiction at its finest